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Risk assessments overview

A risk assessment is a structured record of the hazards in your business, who could be harmed, and the controls you have in place to keep people safe. In a UK food and hospitality setting it is not optional - it is a legal requirement, and it is one of the first things an Environmental Health Officer (EHO) will ask to see on a visit.

SafetyBrik is the digital replacement for the SFBB (Safer Food Better Business) pack. The Risk assessments area is where the printed assessments at the back of that pack live, organised by category, versioned, and ready to show on demand.

Why risk assessments are required​

Under UK Health & Safety law (Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999) every employer must:

  • Identify hazards in the workplace.
  • Decide who could be harmed and how.
  • Evaluate the risk and decide on controls.
  • Record the findings (mandatory if you have five or more employees).
  • Review the assessment regularly and after any significant change.

For food businesses, this sits alongside your Food Safety Management System (HACCP / SFBB). EHOs expect to see written risk assessments covering food safety, fire, manual handling, and general workplace hazards - and they expect those assessments to be current, signed off, and reviewed.

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SafetyBrik treats risk assessments the same way an EHO does: written down, dated, versioned, and reviewed on a schedule. If it is not in here, it is not evidence.

What gets recorded​

Every assessment in SafetyBrik captures:

  • Title - e.g. "Kitchen Food Safety Risk Assessment".
  • Category - one of the standard groupings (see below).
  • Review frequency - in months. The default is 6, and SafetyBrik tracks the next review date for you.
  • Notes - any context for the assessment.
  • Hazards - the hazard register, scored on a 1-5 likelihood and 1-5 severity scale.
  • Status and version - draft, current, or superseded, with an explicit version number.

See Building risk assessments for the full builder flow.

Categories operators commonly carry​

SafetyBrik ships with the categories most UK hospitality operators need:

  • Food safety - cross-contamination, temperature control, allergen handling, cleaning chemicals.
  • Fire safety - cooking equipment, extraction, evacuation routes, electrical risk.
  • Slips, trips and falls - wet floors, spills, cables, kitchen-to-front-of-house transitions.
  • Manual handling - deliveries, stock rotation, moving heavy equipment.
  • General workplace - lone working, violence and aggression, display screens, stress.
  • Custom - anything specific to your site (e.g. a wood-fired oven, a coffee roaster, a glycol line).

These categories map directly to what an EHO and a fire officer expect to see in a folder behind the counter. SafetyBrik keeps them all in one searchable list.

Where to find them in the app​

  • List view - the risk assessments list lives inside the SafetyBrik Records area at /safety/records?tab=risk-assessments. You can filter by category and by location.
  • Builder - new assessments open at /safety/risk-assessments/new and existing ones at /safety/risk-assessments/:id.
  • Audit trail - completed assessments appear in Prove It and the Reports area, ready to export for an EHO visit.
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Risk assessments are location-aware. If you operate multiple sites, each site keeps its own assessments and review schedule, and the list filters by location.

Lifecycle: draft, current, superseded​

Every assessment moves through a simple lifecycle:

  1. Draft - you are still building it. Not yet considered live evidence.
  2. Current - signed off and active. This is the version an EHO would see.
  3. Superseded - replaced by a newer version. Kept on file as audit history.

When something changes (a new piece of equipment, a near-miss, a regulation update) you create a new version rather than overwriting the old one. The old version is preserved so you can always show what your controls were at any point in time.

Next steps​